Nicholas Getting Married in October.

Nicholas proposed to his girlfriend, Noemi, about a month or two ago, and of course, she said yes! The wedding date is October 4th. They will be having the wedding in Lake California at the Lake Club, out on the grass. 

Noemi will move to California sometime at the end of September (since she lives in New Jersey). 

I'm excited to have another sister-in-law!😁 It's going to be awesome! She's super sweet and awesome to be around. She also has a beautiful singing voice and hopefully will sing for our church. And she cooks amazing Mexican food. She's perfect for Nicholas because he has more of a quiet personality, and so does she. But she can also be extroverted when she needs to be and can socialize really well with people. And she's a Christian, of course. She's perfect for him. I'm so glad my brother picked such a wonderful person to marry. 😊 I'm already imagining the little, cute children they're going to have. 😂 Imagine a Nick Jr. So cute! 

Okay, so for Noelle and Cameron's wedding, I wrote a poem for them and recited it out loud on the mic. And for Nick and Noemi's wedding, I wanted to write a poem for them too. I haven't started writing it, so I'd better do that. But it would be cool if I made it a tradition for the rest of the boys when they get married. Just write a poem for each wedding. 

Here are the engagement photos:

Our Family Health Challenge.

So, starting today, our family will be doing a health challenge every day until Easter. Noelle made a group chat for all the people who will be doing it:

Risa, Noelle, Cameron, Gideon, Mom, Dad, Johanna, Simeon, Jonathan. 

We each get to pick and personalize our challenge. But it can't be so easy or hard that we won't stick to it. It has to be a bit challenging for us. 

This is my goal:

Go on 20 min jogs daily, and take my dog on walks.
10-minute split video every day. 
50 pull-ups a week on the pull-up bar. 
No more than one slice of bread a day.
No more than two servings of dessert a week. 

We've been talking about what the penalty should be if we miss a day. So far, we've decided they have to put $1 in the pot, but it doubles every time they miss another day. I think we should start out with $2 just to make it more interesting. But we'll see. 😊

At the end of every day, we have to text this ✅. That means that we finished our goal that day, and if we didn't text that in the chat, then we would get a penalty.

I'm really excited about this challenge! If I follow through, I will be able to get a lot more flexible from doing all the splits exercises and eat a bit more healthier than I did before. 

Yesterday was Easter!

Yesterday was Easter! 

My Opa and Oma stayed the night and my cousin and my aunt stayed the night too. They came on Thursday to Sunday because Sunday is Easter and we were going to have a big feast with everybody and Cameron would also come. On the day when my cousins and my Opa and Oma came, we had an early Easter egg hunt because everybody wanted to do it. And we did another Easter egg hunt on the same day and had it on every day that my cousins and my aunt and my Opa and Oma stayed. It was so much fun!

On Easter, Cameron brought smoked tri-tip. It was so good. My brother Jonathan brought lamb stew. Everybody liked that best! We also had fruit salad and couscous and asparagus and some crackers.  

For dessert, we had chocolate-covered strawberries and cookies and pudding and more fruit salad with whipping cream on top and some candy. There were lots of sweets!

After that, we went down to the tennis courts and played. The tennis courts are right next to the Lake Club, but the Lake Club is closed right now. My mom my Dad and my brother Nicholas and I all played. We had four rackets and some balls for it. We had two people on each side. I haven't really played in a while but I tried anyway. I got better and better. I love playing tennis so do my mom and dad. 

Two days before that we played tennis and it was at night. We turned the lights on. There was a switch for setting how many minutes you want it to go for. We set it to 45 min and when it was almost done I did another 35 minutes. And when there was one more minute left, I was about to hit the ball and then all of the sudden the lights turned off! It was pitched dark we could barely see. We just called it a night and headed back home.



What we did on Palm Sunday!

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. 

Noelle and Cameron stayed the night at our house on Saturday until Sunday. So they can come to church with us in the morning. 

We had to leave at 8:00 to get to the church because we were going to Sacramento. And my second oldest brother lives in Sacramento. And he goes to a church there that we are going to visit. We have been there a couple of times. And after that, we are going to our brother's house and celebrate Palm Sunday. It was really fun!.

Here is me reading the Bible:

My brother Caleb has a house in Sacramento. So that is why we are going there. It took us to get there 2 and a half hours. I went with Noelle and Cameron and my brother Gideon in one car. The car that we were in was Cameron's new car. 

We celebrated Palm Sunday at our brother Caleb's house. It was lots of fun!

For lunch, we had tacos and chips. And for dessert, we had brownies and different types of ice cream. It was so good!

On the way back to our house we stopped by a gas station and got some snacks for everybody. It was like these gummy worms but on the outside, there was this hard candy. And we also got Reese's Pieces and a little container of trail-mix and banana chips. 

When we finally made it up to our house Cameron and Noelle dropped us off and left back home.



My Sister Noelle got Engaged!

My sister Noelle got engaged with our friend Cameron. She was so surprised. 

This is how it happened: we were on a walk and my brother Jonathan helped Cameron set up some stuff for the engagement. Jonathan had a drone so he can fly it around the area so when Cameron proposes to Noelle the drone has a camera so it can see them. It looks really good. Cameron's brothers and sisters were there to help too. Zack is Cameron's brother and he hid behind a tree with a go-pro. And Cameron's two sisters were right next to my brother Jonathan videoing on their phone. 

My sister Noelle thought it was for somebody else's romantic place because she saw a rose petal on the ground. So she said to Cameron we should go because somebody else might be here having a romantic time. And then she saw Jonathan. She didn't know he was going to be there. And then she said hey that looks just like Jonathan. And Cameron and I were like "it IS Jonathan!" and we were laughing a little bit. She was like oh really! And then I went over to Jonathan. And Cameron took Noelle over to one part of the hill because there was an arbor. The arbor was decorated. And my brother Jonathan got Snickers the horse that belonged to Noelle's friend Gail. She said you guys can take the horse. So we took the horse and brought it to the hills. It takes a half-hour to get there. 

The horse was all decorated in roses and vines. It was really pretty.

Apparently, it took them a long time to set up all of it.it took them two hours and a half to set all of it up. But it was worth it.

We started the walk there at 4:00 PM. And came back home at 7:30 PM. We were so tired and exhausted. Our feet hurt really bad from walking and getting all of the stuff back from the hill. But when we came back we forgot the halter for the horse, so today we are going to get it.

When we were walking back the horse the sky got dark and then the horse started to get scared. So we called Noelle and she said we are already on our way back so she said she can take care of the horse and she walked it back. And we went with her in the dark. We had flashlights so we can see. A lot of cows were following us and then we scared them away. And we finally made it back. 

Here are some pictures